Sabelmouse's Blog (411)

On January 19th, 2011, the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York City will hold the world premiere of Not My Life -- a feature-length documentary film about modern-day slavery and global human trafficking, about horrifying practices that affect millions of children, women and men in every part of the world -- a shameful but neglected reality in our "global village".…Continue

Pineapple is the latest bargain offer in supermarkets, but the true cost
is paid in the countries where it is produced. Guardian special
correspondent Felicity Lawrence investigates reports of environmental
damage, union-busting and poverty wages in Costa Rica's fruit industry

When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In
particular, they can't read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially…

The Environmental Justice Foundation lists several of the pesticides used in cotton growing: Aldicarb, Endosulfan, Monocrotophos, and Deltamethrin. These chemical products can cause harm to humans. Aldicarb is listed by the World Health Organziation as “extremely hazardous,” The Institute of Science in Society says that one drop can be fatal to an adult male. Endosulfan was reported to have caused 24 confirmed deaths of cotton workers in the African nation of Benin in… Continue

I’m dead excited to read a new anthology of pieces on food sovereignty, edited by my friends Annette Desmarais, Nettie Wiebe, and Hannah Wittman. I’ve got a piece in it (a version of which is here) but the reason to be excited lies not only in the cross-section of individual analyses, but also in the arc that Annette, Nettie and Hannah trace through the book. Food Sovereignty jacket-FINAL (lo-res). More details here.…Continue

When I walked out, I didn't realise how
permanently the experience of solitary would mark me.' Photograph:
Benjamin Sklar for the Guardian

I first entered Louisiana State Penitentiary in the early 60s, at the age of 18. I was in and out of that place for the rest of the decade. Back then, if you were young, black and had a record, police in New…

Imagine you live in New York City, and one fine morning you awake to the realization that 90 percent of all the buildings that were more than five stories tall have been destroyed. You will hardly have the words to talk about this devastation, but I'm sure you will walk around the
rubble to make sense of it all.…